Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937) was a Scottishauthor and dramatist. He is best remembered for creating Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, whom he based on his friends, the Llewelyn Davies boys. He is also credited with popularising the name Wendy, which was very uncommon before he gave it to the heroine of Peter Pan.[1]

Contents

Childhood and adolescence

Barrie was born in Kirriemuir, Angus, to a conservative Calvinist family. His father David Barrie was a modestly successful weaver. His mother Margaret Ogilvy Barrie had assumed her deceased mother's household responsibilities at the age of 8. Barrie was the ninth child of ten (two of whom died before he was born), all of whom were schooled in at least the three Rs, in preparation for possible professional careers. He was a small child (he only grew to 5 ft 3½ in. according to his 1934 passport), and drew attention to himself with storytelling.

When he was 6 years old, Barrie's next-older brother David (his mother's favourite) died two days before his 14th birthday in an ice-skating accident. This left his mother devastated, and Barrie tried to fill David's place in his mother's attentions, even wearing David's clothes and whistling in the manner that he did. One time Barrie entered her room, and heard her say 'Is that you?' 'I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to,' wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother, Margaret Ogilvy (1896), 'and I said in a little lonely voice, "No, it's no' him, it's just me."' Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her.[2] Despite evidence to the contrary, it has been speculated that this trauma induced psychogenic dwarfism, and was responsible for his short stature and apparently asexual adulthood.[3] Eventually Barrie and his mother entertained each other with stories of her brief childhood and books such as Robinson Crusoe and The Pilgrim's Progress.[4]

At the age of 8, Barrie was sent to The Glasgow Academy, in the care of his eldest siblings Alexander and Mary Ann, who taught at the school. When he was 10 he returned home and continued his education at the Forfar Academy. At 13, he left home for Dumfries Academy, again under the watch of Alexander and Mary Ann. He became a voracious reader, and was fond of penny dreadfuls, and the works of Robert Michael Ballantyne and James Fenimore Cooper. At Dumfries he and his friends spent time in the garden of Moat Brae house, playing pirates 'in a sort of Odyssey that was long afterwards to become the play of Peter Pan'.[5][6] They formed a drama club, producing his first play Bandelero the Bandit, which provoked a minor controversy following a scathing moral denunciation from a clergyman on the school's governing board.[4]

Literary career

Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, London

Barrie wished to pursue a career as an author, but was persuaded by his family — who wished him to have a profession such as the ministry — to enroll at the University of Edinburgh, where he wrote drama reviews for a local newspaper. He worked for a year and a half as a staff journalist in Nottingham following a job advertisement found by his sister in a newspaper, then returned to Kirriemuir, using his mother's stories about the town (which he called 'Thrums') for a piece submitted to a paper in London. The editor 'liked that Scotch thing',[4] so Barrie wrote a series of them, which served as the basis for his first novels: Auld Licht Idylls (1888), A Window in Thrums (1890),[7] and The Little Minister (1891). Literary criticism of these early works has been unfavourable, tending to disparage them as sentimental and nostalgic depictions of a parochial Scotland far from the realities of the industrialised nineteenth century, but they were popular enough to establish Barrie as a very successful writer. His two 'Tommy' novels, Sentimental Tommy (1896) and Tommy and Grizel (1902), were about a boy and young man who clings to childish fantasy, with an unhappy ending.

Meanwhile, Barrie's attention turned increasingly to works for the theatre, beginning with a biography about Richard Savage (performed only once, and critically panned). He immediately followed this with Ibsen's Ghost (1891), a parody of Henrik Ibsen's dramas Hedda Gabler and Ghosts (unlicensed in the UK until 1914,[8] it had created a sensation at the time from a single 'club' performance). The production of Barrie's play at Toole's Theatre in London was seen by William Archer, the translator of Ibsen's works into English, who enjoyed the humour of the play and recommended it to others. Barrie also authored Jane Annie, a failed comic opera for Richard D'Oyly Carte (1893), which he begged his friend Arthur Conan Doyle to revise and finish for him. In 1901 and 1902 he had back-to-back successes: Quality Street, about a responsible 'old maid' who poses as her own flirtatious niece to win the attention of a former suitor returned from the war; and The Admirable Crichton, a critically-acclaimed social commentary with elaborate staging, about an aristocratic household shipwrecked on a desert island, in which the butler naturally rises to leadership over his lord and ladies for the duration of their time away from civilization.

The first appearance of Peter Pan came in The Little White Bird, which was serialised in the United States, then published in a single volume in the UK in 1901. Barrie's most famous and enduring work, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, had its first stage performance on 27 December 1904. This play introduced audiences to the name Wendy, which was inspired by a young girl, Margaret Henley, who called Barrie 'Friendy', but could not pronounce her Rs very well and so it came out as 'Fwendy'. It has been performed innumerable times since then, was developed by Barrie into the 1911 novel Peter and Wendy, and has been adapted by others into feature films, musicals, and more. The Bloomsbury scenes show the societal constraints of late Victorian middle-class domestic reality, contrasted with Neverland, a world where morality is ambivalent. George Bernard Shaw's description of the play as 'ostensibly a holiday entertainment for children but really a play for grown-up people', suggests deeper social allegories at work in Peter Pan. In 1929 Barrie specified that the copyright of the Peter Pan works should go to the nation's leading children's hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The current status of the copyright is somewhat complex.

Barrie had a long string of successes on the stage after Peter Pan, many of which discuss social concerns. The Twelve Pound Look shows a wife divorcing a peer and gaining an independent income. Other plays, such as Mary Rose and a subplot in Dear Brutus revisit the image of the ageless child. Later plays included What Every Woman Knows (1908). His final play was The Boy David (1936), which dramatised the Biblical story of King Saul and the young David. Like the role of Peter Pan, that of David was played by a woman, Elisabeth Bergner, for whom Barrie wrote the play.

Barrie used his considerable income to help finance the production of commercially unsuccessful stage productions. Along with a number of other playwrights, he was involved in the 1909 and 1911 attempts to challenge the censorship of the theatre by the Lord Chamberlain.

Acquaintances

Barrie travelled in high literary circles, and in addition to his professional collaborators, he had many famous friends. Novelist George Meredith was an early social patron. He had a long correspondence with fellow Scot Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived in Samoa at the time, but the two never met in person. George Bernard Shaw was for several years his neighbour, and once participated in a Western that Barrie scripted and filmed. H. G. Wells was a friend of many years, and tried to intervene when Barrie's marriage fell apart. Barrie met Thomas Hardy through Hugh Clifford while he was staying in London.

Barrie's close friend Charles Frohman, who was responsible for producing the debut of Peter Pan in both England and the U.S. and other productions of Barrie's plays, famously declined a lifeboat seat when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat in the North Atlantic, reportedly paraphrasing Peter Pan's famous line from the stage play, 'To die will be an awfully big adventure': "Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life." [2]

Marriage

Barrie became acquainted with actress Mary Ansell in 1891 when he asked his friend Jerome K. Jerome for a pretty actress to play a role in his play Walker, London. The two became friends, and she joined his family in caring for him when he fell very ill in 1893 and 1894.[4] They married in Kirriemuir on 9 July 1894,[9] shortly after Barrie recovered, and Mary retired from the stage; but the relationship was reportedly unconsummated [10] and the couple had no children. The marriage was a small ceremony in his parents' home in the Scottish tradition. In 1900 Mary found Black Lake Cottage, at Farnham, Surrey which became the couple's 'bolt hole' where Barrie could entertain his cricketing friends and the Llewelyn Davieses.[11] Beginning in mid 1908, Mary had an affair with Gilbert Cannan (an associate of Barrie's in his anti-censorship activities), including a visit together to Black Lake Cottage, known only to the house staff. When Barrie learned of the affair in July 1909, he demanded that she end it, but she refused. To avoid the scandal of divorce, he offered a legal separation if she would agree not to see Cannan any more, but she still refused. Barrie sued for divorce on the grounds of infidelity, which was granted in October 1909.[2]

Barrie became acquainted with the family in 1897, meeting George and Jack (and baby Peter) with their nurse (nanny) Mary Hodgson in London's Kensington Gardens. He lived nearby and often walked his Saint Bernard dog Porthos in the park,[13] and entertained the boys regularly with his ability to wiggle his ears and eyebrows, and with his stories. He did not meet Sylvia until a chance encounter at a dinner party in December. He became a regular visitor at the Davies household and a common companion to the woman and her boys, despite the fact that he and she were each married.[2] In 1901, he invited the Davies family to Black Lake Cottage, where he produced an album of captioned photographs of the boys acting out a pirate adventure, entitled The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island. Barrie had two copies made, one of which he gave to Arthur, who misplaced it on a train.[14] The only surviving copy is held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.[15]

Arthur Llewelyn Davies died in 1907, and 'Uncle Jim' became even more involved with the Davieses, providing financial support to them. (His income from Peter Pan and other works was easily adequate to provide for their living expenses and education.) Following Sylvia's death in 1910, Barrie claimed that they had been engaged to be married.[2] Her will indicated nothing to that effect, but specified her wish for 'J.M.B.' to be trustee and guardian to the boys, along with her mother Emma, her brother Guy Du Maurier, and Arthur's brother Compton. It expressed her confidence in Barrie as the boys' caretaker and her wish for 'the boys to treat him (& their uncles) with absolute confidence & straightforwardness & to talk to him about everything.' When copying the will informally for Sylvia's family a few months later, Barrie inserted himself elsewhere: Sylvia had written that she would like Mary Hodgson, the boys' nurse, to continue taking care of them, and for 'Jenny' (referring to Hodgson's sister) to come and help her; Barrie instead wrote 'Jimmy' (Sylvia's nickname for him). Barrie and Hodgson did not get along well, but they served as surrogate parents until the boys went to university and Jack was married.[2]

Barrie also had friendships with other children, both before he met the Davies boys and after they had grown up, and there has since been speculation that Barrie was a paedophile or that he engaged in child sexual abuse.[16][17] However, there is no direct evidence of any such conduct, nor that he was suspected of it at the time. Nico, the youngest of the brothers, flatly denied that Barrie ever behaved inappropriately.[2] 'I don't believe that Uncle Jim ever experienced what one might call "a stirring in the undergrowth" for anyone — man, woman, or child,' he stated. 'He was an innocent — which is why he could write Peter Pan.' [18] His relationships with the surviving Davies boys continued well beyond their childhood and adolescence.

The statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, erected in secret overnight for May Morning in 1912, was supposed to be modelled upon old photographs of Michael dressed as the character. However, the sculptor Sir George Frampton decided to use a different child as a model, leaving Barrie disappointed with the result. 'It doesn't show the devil in Peter,' he said.[2]

Barrie suffered bereavements with the boys, losing the two to whom he was closest in their early twenties. George was killed in action (1915) in World War I. Michael, with whom Barrie corresponded daily while at boarding school and university, drowned (1921) with his friend and possible lover[19] Rupert Buxton, at a known danger spot at Sandford Lock near Oxford, one month short of his 21st birthday. Some years after Barrie's death, Peter compiled his Morgue from family letters and papers, interpolated with his own informed comments in his family and their relationship with Barrie.

Death

Barrie died of pneumonia on 19 June, 1937 and is buried at Kirriemuir next to his parents and two of his siblings. He left the bulk of his estate (excluding the Peter Pan works, which he had previously given to Great Ormond Street Hospital) to his secretary Cynthia Asquith. His birthplace at 4 Brechin Road is maintained as a museum by the National Trust for Scotland.

Biographies

Barrie: the Story of a Genius by Sir J. A. Hammerton, 1929.

J. M. Barrie by W. A. Darlington, 1938.

The Story of J.M.B. by Denis Mackail, commissioned by Cynthia Asquith and Peter Llewelyn Davies as Barrie's authorised biography, and published in 1941.

J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys by Andrew Birkin, 1979 (revised and republished by Yale University Press, 2003).

Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Life of J. M. Barrie by Lisa Chaney, 2005.

Captivated: J. M. Barrie, Daphne du Maurier & the Dark Side of Neverland by Piers Dudgeon, 2008. Published in the US under the title: Neverland: J.M. Barrie, the du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan.

In 1978 the BBC made a miniseries written by Andrew Birkin, The Lost Boys, starring Ian Holm as Barrie and Ann Bell as Sylvia. It dramatized the known chronology of events from his meeting of George and Jack in 1897, through Michael's death in 1921. Birkin's book expands on the film.

Finding Neverland, a semi-fictional movie about his relationship with the family, was released in November 2004, starring Johnny Depp as Barrie and Kate Winslet as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. It takes liberties with the facts, alters the sequence of some events (e.g. Sylvia is already a widow when she meets Barrie), and omits Nico altogether.

Oh, it's — it's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you
don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it
doesn't much matter what else you have. Some women, the few, have
charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have charm for
none.

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to
write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when
he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make
it.

Ch. 1

Your heart is as fresh as your face; and that is well.
The useless men are those who never change with the years.
Many views that I held to in my youth and long afterwards are a
pain to me now, and I am carrying away from Thrums memories of
errors into which I fell at every stage of my ministry. When you
are older you will know that life is a long lesson in
humility.

Ch. 3

If the young leddy was so careless o' insulting other folks'
ancestors, it proves she has nane o' her ain; for them that has
china plates themsel's is the maist careful no to break the china
plates of others.

We never understand how little we need in this world
until we know the loss of it.

Ch. 8

My mother's favourite paraphrase is one known in our house as
David's because it was the last he learned to repeat. It was also
the last thing she read —Art thou afraid his power shall fail When comes thy evil day?
And can an all-creating arm Grow weary or decay?
I heard her voice gain strength as she read it, I saw her timid
face take courage, but when came my evil day, then at the dawning,
alas for me, I was afraid.

Ch. 10

I had been gone a fortnight when the telegram was put into my
hands. I had got a letter from my sister, a few hours before,
saying that all was well at home. The telegram said in five words
that she had died suddenly the previous night. There was no mention
of my mother, and I was three days' journey from home.
The news I got on reaching London was this: my mother did not
understand that her daughter was dead, and they were waiting for me
to tell her.

It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and
almost the only thing known for certain is that there are fairies
wherever there are children.

This story contained the first published reference to
"Peter Pan". After the success of the play Peter Pan, or The
Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up which premiered on 27 December 1904,
the chapters involving Peter were published as Peter Pan in
Kensington Gardens (1906).

Sometimes the little boy who calls me father brings me
an invitation from his mother: "I shall be so pleased if you will
come and see me," and I always reply in some such words as these:
"Dear madam, I decline." And if David asks why I decline, I explain
that it is because I have no desire to meet the woman.
"Come this time, father," he urged lately, "for it is her birthday,
and she is twenty-six," which is so great an age to David, that I
think he fears she cannot last much longer.

Ch. 1

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always
to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?

Often paraphrased as: Always be a little kinder than
necessary.

Ch. 4

If you ask your mother whether she knew about Peter Pan
when she was a little girl she will say, "Why, of course, I did,
child," and if you ask her whether he rode on a goat in those days
she will say, "What a foolish question to ask; certainly he
did." Then if you ask your grandmother whether she knew
about Peter Pan when she was a girl, she also says, "Why, of
course, I did, child," but if you ask her whether he rode on a goat
in those days, she says she never heard of his having a goat.
Perhaps she has forgotten, just as she sometimes forgets your name
and calls you Mildred, which is your mother's name. Still, she
could hardly forget such an important thing as the goat. Therefore
there was no goat when your grandmother was a little girl. This
shows that, in telling the story of Peter Pan, to begin with the
goat (as most people do) is as silly as to put on your jacket
before your vest.Of course, it also shows that Peter is ever so old, but he
is really always the same age, so that does not matter in the
least.

Ch. 14

Every living thing was shunning him. Poor little Peter
Pan, he sat down and cried, and even then he did not know that, for
a bird, he was sitting on his wrong part. It is a blessing that he
did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power
to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease
forever to be able to do it. The reason birds can fly and we can't
is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to
have wings.

Ch. 14

It is frightfully difficult to know much about the
fairies, and almost the only thing known for certain is that there
are fairies wherever there are children.

Ch. 16

When you were a bird you knew the fairies pretty well, and you
remember a good deal about them in your babyhood, which it is a
great pity you can't write down, for gradually you forget, and I
have heard of children who declared that they had never once seen a
fairy. Very likely if they said this in the Kensington Gardens,
they were standing looking at a fairy all the time. The reason they
were cheated was that she pretended to be something else. This is
one of their best tricks.

Ch. 16

Wise children always choose a mother who was a shocking
flirt in her maiden days, and so had several offers before she
accepted their fortunate papa.

Ch. 22

"In twenty years," I said, smiling at her tears, "a man grows
humble, Mary. I have stored within me a great fund of affection,
with nobody to give it to, and I swear to you, on the word of a
soldier, that if there is one of those ladies who can be got to
care for me I shall be very proud." Despite her semblance of
delight I knew that she was wondering at me, and I wondered at
myself, but it was true.

Based upon the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who
Wouldn't Grow Up (1904) and often published simply as "Peter
Pan" Full text
online

All children, except one, grow up. They soon
know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One
day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she
plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she
must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand
to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for
ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but
henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after
you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

Ch. 1

Occasionally in her travels through her children's minds Mrs.
Darling found things she could not understand, and of these quite
the most perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no Peter, and
yet he was here and there in John and Michael's minds, while
Wendy's began to be scrawled all over with him. The name stood out
in bolder letters than any of the other words, and as Mrs. Darling
gazed she felt that it had an oddly cocky appearance.
"Yes, he is rather cocky," Wendy admitted with regret. Her mother
had been questioning her.

Ch. 1

You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time,
its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping
about, and that was the beginning of fairies.

Ch. 3

"There ought to be one fairy for every boy and girl."
"Ought to be? Isn't there?""No. You see children know such a lot now, they soon don't
believe in fairies, and every time a child says, 'I don't believe
in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down
dead."

Ch. 3

She said out of pity for him, "I shall give you a kiss if you
like," but though he once knew, he had long forgotten what kisses
are, and he replied, "Thank you," and held out his hand, thinking
she had offered to put something into it. This was a great shock to
her, but she felt she could not explain without shaming him, so
with charming delicacy she gave Peter a thimble which happened to
be in her pocket, and pretended that it was a kiss.

Ch. 6

Peter flung out his arms. There were no children there, and it
was night time; but he addressed all who might be dreaming of the
Neverland, and who were therefore nearer to him than you think:
boys and girls in their nighties, and naked papooses in their
baskets hung from trees.
"Do you believe?" he cried.

Ch. 13

"If you believe," he shouted to them, "clap your hands;
don't let Tink die."
Many clapped.
Some didn't.
A few beasts hissed.
The clapping stopped suddenly; as if countless mothers had rushed
to their nurseries to see what on earth was happening; but already
Tink was saved. First her voice grew strong, then she popped out of
bed, then she was flashing through the room more merry and impudent
than ever. She never thought of thanking those who believed, but
she would have like to get at the ones who had hissed.

Ch. 13

When a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy
is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new
fairies. They live in nests on the tops of trees; and the mauve
ones are boys and the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are
just little sillies who are not sure what they are.

Ch. 17

Michael believed longer than the other boys, though they jeered
at him; so he was with Wendy when Peter came for her at the end of
the first year. She flew away with Peter in the frock she had woven
from leaves and berries in the Neverland, and her one fear was that
he might notice how short it had become; but he never noticed, he
had so much to say about himself.
She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times,
but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind.

Ch. 17

"Why can't you fly now, mother?"
"Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget
the way."
"Why do they forget the way?"
"Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is
only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly."

Ch. 17

"I am old, Peter. I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew up
long ago."
"You promised not to!"
"I couldn't help it. I am a married woman, Peter."

Ch. 17

As you look at Wendy, you may see her hair becoming white, and
her figure little again, for all this happened long ago. Jane is
now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret; and every
spring cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter comes for
Margaret and takes her to the Neverland, where she tells him
stories about himself, to which he listens eagerly. When
Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter's
mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay
and innocent and heartless.

Ch. 17

Quotes about
Barrie

It is my belief that Peter Pan is a great and refining and
uplifting benefaction to this sordid and money-mad age; and the
next best play is a long way behind.